Gabriel Smith

From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup, and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents’ house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end. Gabriel has trouble delivering on his promise as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he finds unfinished manuscripts written by his parents which seem to mutate every time he picks them up, and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets. Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story; flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose. Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.

I was in the waiting room. Then I was in the examination room. Gabriel’s skin is falling off. His dad is dead. He owes his editor a novel. His girlfriend won’t answer his calls. Tasked by his horribly well-adjusted brother with clearing out the family home for sale, Gabriel’s sanity quickly begins to unravel. His parents’ old manuscripts appear to change each time he reads them. A bizarre home video hints at long-buried secrets. And there’s a hideous man in the garden. From a stunningly original new talent, this is a debut novel unlike anything you have read.